


soykaf-kissed lips

by tupperbisque



Series: berlin blues [3]
Category: Shadowrun: Dragonfall
Genre: F/F, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29960343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tupperbisque/pseuds/tupperbisque
Summary: Someone unexpected turns up on Glimmer's birthday.
Relationships: Glory/Female Protagonist (Shadowrun: Dragonfall)
Series: berlin blues [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743943
Kudos: 2





	soykaf-kissed lips

**Author's Note:**

> this is another old fic i resurrected... and now it will see light.

It's another day, as usual. Night, actually. Another run, another success, the crew settling down to enjoy the gratifying three-tone _beep_ of nuyen in their accounts.

Dietrich cooks up a storm again in celebration - but this time, he surprises Glimmer with soy-bread kebabs stuffed with actual, _actual!_ beef that masks the plasticky taste of synthesised sauce. Blitz sourced the meat, Dietrich and Eiger went to collect the goods at Gesundbrunnen. Yes, all within the time Glimmer took to meet their client to report a mission well done.

She realises halfway through dinner that it's her birthday, that's why.

Blitz breaks out the booze for himself and Dietrich for the occasion, but Eiger holds out her mess tin halfway through the bottles to everyone's surprise.

"Never took you for someone who drank, Eiger dear."

"I am perfectly capable of enjoying myself, Blitz," the troll retorts, before tipping her tin at Glimmer and then into her throat. "Besides, no better reason than today."

Glimmer raises her mug of soykaf with a grin.

Her crew's idea of a celebration is a simple team dinner with booze around the TV. The trideo watch party happens how it usually does: lots of yelling at terrible episodes, fighting for space on the couch, or falling off it in sheer delight. Since Eiger selected a rom-com today, it's that, with more pained groans from cringey dialogue.

After an hour of such on a heavy dinner, Glimmer decides she needs a break.

Dietrich had nestled his head into the crook of her shoulder after a particularly painful meet-ugly scene, so it takes Glimmer a bit of shimmying to loose his grip.

She slips away with her soykaf. Doesn't know where to go, honestly. Perhaps it's fitting then, that suddenly there's wind on her cheeks and chill in her bones and she's outside again, on the balcony overlooking the street.

She inhales, air sliding slowly into her lungs that grounds her.

The kiez is beautiful in winter, snow floating down like ash - not ash, the way winters are in industrial, polluted Vienna. In the distance, the wall shielding F-State from corporate Berlin looms tall, drab and gray and boring and bureaucratic as all corps are bound to be. It hurts, Glimmer knows. It hurts to see Monika's dream threatened, crushed despite their best efforts--

Glimmer inhales, again. There's a pricking to her skin that isn't because of her scratchy flannel shirt, but it's welcome. It reminds her to take a breath. To bask in the moment. To remember that the morning brings new things, just like how it's easier to think of _dein Schatz_ now, as the person she'd grown up with. Time eases the hurts of before.

Tonight… she can breathe.

She puts her cup on the railing, watches as the heat melts the snow around the bottom, and thinks the better of warming her soykaf with a spell. How does snow-chilled soykaf taste, right?

That's when a can rattles, as if kicked. A feeling settles. A curiosity rises. Her elven senses pick on the change in the air, and Glimmer looks from her cup to the street, to the streetlamp that flickers and flickers but never seems to work regardless of the army of Kreuzbasar riggers tinkering with it.

And that's when she grasps the handrail in shock.

"No." The breath escapes her before she notices, a wisp of smoke that disappears as fast as it comes. "I cannot be so lucky. I'm just exhausted, and seeing things."

But she's seeing a familiar figure in the lamplight: raven hair curling at the ends, stark against the fabric of a travelling cloak wrapped tight around a strong frame. A clawed hand pulling the edges together. Eyes not ringed red, locked steadily on Glimmer.

_Glory?_

Glimmer backs away, one step, two steps. Squeezes the handrail, curls her fingers tight around the worn metal, not quite believing, not quite certain if she should let her hopes rise again, as they've risen so many times the past year - snatches of raven hair, cyborg limbs, the hint of chrome on her senses.

All the while, the figure remains statuesque, silent. Waiting, and watching from the pavement. As if afraid to approach.

Glimmer vaults over the railing and tumbles down into the snow below.

She picks herself up, knees shaking from a jump hastily executed and rarely attempted - she's fit enough to get by, but mages aren't particularly athletic. That's Eiger's domain and Gl--

Glimmer's smile is rueful as she straightens. So convinced is she that she's dreaming, delusional, that she doesn't move towards the figure across her, their face bone-white under the flickering streetlamp there's no way Glimmer can mistake her for someone else.

And yet.

The kiez never sleeps, but it's the quietest this time of the night.

"Glimmer?"

"Sorry, I just." Glimmer shakes her head, once, twice. Blinks her eyes for good measure before taking hesitant steps forward. Keeps her arms firmly by her sides. "Is it really you?"

Glory doesn't smile. Has never smiled, in all the time Glimmer knew her. But there's that unmistakable twitch of her lips again, and the soft look that Glory reserves for her. _Only_ her, Dietrich had insisted, back when he first saw it after the Feuerstelle run.

Glory steps closer to Glimmer, close enough to blot out the light of the streetlamp above them. Once again, Glimmer is reminded of how much taller her old friend is, and Glimmer feels a chill down her spine. Shivers when Glory's hands come out from under her cloak to straighten Glimmer's collar, ruffled from her acrobatic jump from the balcony. And not because it's freezing right now.

Her hands linger on Glimmer's shirt - a comforting, solid weight. "Do you trust me, Glimmer?"

_When had she not?_ Glimmer's gaze flicks between Glory's eyes and her finger-razors on her shirt, slender black claws too often coated in sticky red, before settling on the former. "Absolutely."

Glimmer is familiar with the essence of her crew. Dietrich is electric, discordant; a wave on the cusp of breaking against the shore. Blitz is a thousand tiny pinpricks, harmonised as a whole. Eiger is melancholic, a mountain home to churning lava within waiting to erupt.

Glory…

Glory doesn't have an aura, cyberware cannibalising most of her essence to leave a husk of a person. A void, in the sense-scape of essence Awakened like herself meander in. Yes, the Heart of Feuerstelle lingers on her, a hint of cinnamon and fresh pine on sharp iron, but Glory _herself_ isn't supposed to have an aura, the last she remembers. Yet, Glimmer's senses tingle with excitement, elven ears twitching the entire time since.

Maybe that's why Glimmer finds herself standing on her toes. Sees Glory lean down, closer to her face. A ghost of a smile on her porcelain skin, a reflection of the grin on Glimmer's lips.

Despite herself, Glimmer finds herself reeled in; an invisible string, tying their auras together in this moment.

In this moment, Glimmer meets Glory's kiss.

She expects - _expected!_ \- cold steel on her lips, only to taste smoke and something more and-

They pull back, slowly. Glimmer, still stunned-yet-not. Looking up to watch Glory lick her own lips, and Glimmer wonders if kissing them would make her taste soykaf again.

Then, the realisation of what transpired rams into her like a U-Bahn train, and Glimmer _blushes._

Humming, Glory reaches to tuck behind errant strands of her purple hair, gently curling her claws around the shell of her ear. Despite herself, Glimmer shivers at the contact. At the _memory_ of ages ago, where…

"Happy birthday, Glimmer," Glory whispers.

Of all things, in her abject deadpan.

Glimmer laughs. She laughs loud enough that it bubbles from her chest and vibrates in her bones, her hands fisting into Glory's arms tighter with every breath. Snow falls around them in a kiez in winter, pinpricks of cold as they land on her skin as damp droplets.

Glory notices, and wraps her travelling cloak to wrap around them both. Glimmer only burrows deeper into the sturdy strength of Glory's arms.

For a moment, she forgets about the dragons and corpos boxing them in on all sides. For a moment, she forgets about the sum of her decisions that have led her to this moment.

For a moment, she forgets about the photograph in her chest pocket, worn and creased in the corners.

She forgets it all, because Glory's weight is warm on her hands, and Glory's not-aura - lifeless chrome and all - is a familiar chill on her soul.

"I didn't- I never expected-" Glimmer pauses, then giggles softly at herself. Glory starts playing with her hair, twirling her locks around razor-thin fingers. The steady rise-and-fall of her chest that Glimmer curls into. "I missed you so much."

"I go where my heart is," Glory murmurs. "The way you showed me."

_Glory, such a romantic._ This is a side to Glory new to Glimmer, a side Glimmer yearns to get to know more. For now, she closes her eyes, committing this moment to memory. Because Glory came back, like she promised. She's here, and here to stay, come what may.

"Glimmer, you alright? I felt something odd, and got worried when I couldn't sense y--" Dietrich sways and stops in his tracks, sleep leaving his face in a blink. "Glory?"

Glory's lips quirk again, in the barest hint of a smile. "I'm home."


End file.
